RIM is the biggest loser, yet again, dropping on a unit sales and market share basis

It's that time per quarter again and Comscore has delivered its latest update for the state of U.S. mobile phone market. The study looks at total market share, both on a per-platform and per-manufacturer basis, based on a survey of 30,000 U.S. adults. Note total market share (this study) is different than recent adopter market share (which has been published elsewhere, e.g. in Nielsen Mobile's recent report).

When it comes to platforms, there are few surprises here. Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android continues to post impressive growth reaching 43.7 percent of U.S. smartphones -- up from 38.1 percent in October. And Apple, Inc. (AAPL) continues to outpace the general market growth too, albeit growing slower than Google. Its iPhone hit 27.3 percent market share, up from 26.6 percent in May.

[Source: ComScore]

The biggest loser in smartphone crowd -- continuing its trail of losses -- is Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion, Ltd. (TSE:RIM), which dropped from 24.7 percent to 19.7 percent (notably, also a drop on a unit (!) basis). The defunct Symbian platform from Finland's Nokia Oyj. (HEL:NOK1V) also posted a drop -- a relatively predictable result as the company looks to phase in Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Windows Phone 7 OS across its lineup.

Speaking of Microsoft, the Redmond, Washington operating systems giant managed to hang on to most of its market share dropping only from 5.8 percent to 5.7 percent, despite laggard sales of its flagship Windows Phone 7 platform.

This indicates that Microsoft actually grew its deployment in units, as overall Comscore says smartphones jumped to 84.5 million units in the wild in the U.S. -- up 10 percent from a quarter before.

When it comes to overall mobile deployment on a per-manufacturer basis, Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (SEO:005930) continues to reign supreme, growing from 24.8 percent in May to 25.3 percent in August of smartphone and non-smartphone sales. The rest of the rankings looking familiar -- LG Electronics (SEO:066570) in second, Google's recently acquired Motorola unit in third, Apple in fourth, and RIM in fifth. Those rankings are identical to previous ones published by ComScore in August.